


Stayed Bloom

by ezlebe



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Confessions, Flowers, Hospitals, Implied Audra/Bill/Mike, Implied Beverly/Ben, Language of Flowers, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:20:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29247192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezlebe/pseuds/ezlebe
Summary: Eddie rolls his eyes down at his rice when the topic of numen flowers comes up, because it always does; it seems like every adult night out he suffers through, which have mostly been for work, leads to the subject of whether or not everyone’s gotten blooms across their skin. His answer has been tensely, awkwardly the same for the last five years: no, he hasn’t gotten any; no, he’s sure his wife isn’t his soulmate; yes, he’s almost forty – end of discussion.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 14
Kudos: 133





	Stayed Bloom

Eddie rolls his eyes down at his rice when the topic of flowers comes up, because it always does; it seems like every adult night out he's suffered through, which have mostly been for work, leads to the subject of whether or not everyone’s gotten blooms across their skin. His answer has been tensely, awkwardly the same for the last five years: no, he hasn’t gotten any; no, he’s sure his wife isn’t his soulmate; yes, he’s almost forty – end of discussion.

He did used to, prior getting married, tack on _yet_ , but no one's ever taken notice of the change except him. He knows Myra hasn't because it would, at least, have earn him some cloying airs of praise.

Eddie is a little less comfortable admitting and dismissing his lack of flowers to these old friends, especially when Richie, still in the chair next to him from that ill-advised arm wrestling, makes a considering noise. It is, for some reason, a peculiar kind of heart-wrenching.

“It's kind of weird…” Richie says, reaching over to his other seat and dragging over the dregs of his baijiu. “I think I – I actually remember I had them before, right? But no, I still don’t know.”

“Oh,” Bev says, leaning on her elbow, brows going up her forehead in interest while her eyes rove across Richie’s shirtfront like it’s going to reveal petals underneath. “Before like _here_ – in _Derry_?”

“Yeah,” Richie laughs, a little too loud, reaching up and mussing a hand through the hair at the back of his head. “They’ve shown up a couple times since, though, so they’ve seen me!”

“I get that,” Bev says, smiling back, then shifting up and sweeping her fingers across the tendons across the back of a hand. “Around the backs of my hands. Always pretty weak, though.”

“Ah, the price of fame,” Richie says, sighing exaggeratedly like this is some tragedy, _knowing_ he’s got a soulmate out there somewhere in the world. “I wish I knew who, though, I think… I’ve had them since my birthday.” He turns to Eddie with a tilt of his head, brow furrowing, “I showed you right?”

Eddie blinks back in bemusement, then feels his eyes get wide while panic crawls up his throat. He does remember that, suddenly – remembers how Richie’s flowers bloomed on the morning of his birthday, rings of red daisies bright and scattered across his exposed biceps, and he remembers very, very clearly that the flowers grew bigger and brighter when…

Shit.

 _Shit_.

“Eddie?” Richie prompts, an odd look on his face.

“Yeah,” Eddie responds belatedly, sharply clearing his throat and frowning back at Richie’s bemused moue. “Daisies.”

“Oh, _right_ ,” Richie says, turning back to Bev with an oblivious wag of his eyebrows. “It was red daisies,” he says, letting go of his chopsticks to trace around the place they’d bloomed on his eighteenth birthday. “Around my arms.”

“Aw, that’s sweet – they were holding onto you.”

“Me and Audra match,” Bill says, pulling up a sleeve to show a daffodil wound across his wrist. “But we, uh – we actually get some faint ones, too. Like what you’re talking about, from neither of us.” He pulls up his other sleeve to show a matching daffodil, but orange at the center, “See – _Oh_. Weird. It didn’t… have that color before.”

Mike chokes mid-sip of his jack and coke.

“Do you think you have a third?” Bev says, attention diverting to Bill in an instant, much to Richie’s exaggerated consternation by the tetchy flick of his chopsticks.

“You okay?” Eddie asks Mike, who’s visibly turning red under the pain of whiskey down the wrong tube. He glances to Mike’s empty water glass, then back to his face, “Do you need more water?”

Mike shakes his head with a crooked grin, waving off the question while pressing the knuckles of his other hand across his mouth. “I’m good, Eddie. Great.”

“Sure,” Eddie mutters, watching a beat longer before glancing back toward Richie, only to find him looking straight back; he nearly knocks over his own water glass at the surprise, but manages to catch it clumsily, and glances up a second time only to see Richie has started back up with Bev. He grits his teeth against a burst of disappointment, then pushes himself up from the table.

“Eddie?” Ben says, looking straight up with a startled tilt of his chin from the next chair.

“Uh,” Eddie says, swallowing a little and taking a step back, aggressively gesturing with his thumb toward the exit. “Can’t a guy go to the bathroom? Shit.”

“You _don’t_ have to tell us what you’re doing in there,” Richie quips, kicking up his chair against the table with a grin and a cocked brow over his frames.

“Shut _up_ ,” Eddie snaps, biting back a laugh while he makes a show of quickly turning on his heel.

He does end up in the bathroom, leaning over a sink and staring at his red face in the mirror. He’s fucked; he’s so fucking fucked.

It’s not like he…

Eddie thought he didn’t have a soulmate. He listened to his mother, then to Myra, until he _believed_ he didn’t have one; he’d thought that he was _like_ Myra or his mother – his soulmate taken by some early illness or injury, only unlike them, he just never met them.

But it’s bullshit! He did and he _does,_ and he’s been accidentally putting flowers on Richie whenever he’s caught his specials _for fucking years._ He’s watched so many, fuck, but at least he has an excuse now? If it still counts as one, when the excuse is technically more embarrassing than the original act.

Eddie hears the knob turn at the door and turns to it with a snarl. “Get _out_ – ” He feels his shoulders fall, watching Ben slip inside the door in the least intrusive way possible. “Oh. You.”

“Hey,” Ben says, a particularly knowing sort of smile crossing his lips.

“Well, _fuck_ ,” Eddie says, reaching up and rubbing hard at his face, then looking back to share a glare with himself in the mirror. “So you remember that.”

“Yeah,” Ben says, quietly, stepping up next to Eddie against the sink.

“I didn’t know you were such a fan of fashion,” Eddie mutters, as if they’d ever really known that Bev was Ben’s soulmate, not just that Ben hoped she was, since she’d been long gone from Derry by then, and Ben, like Eddie, hadn’t gotten his flowers until after they _all_ split.

“I’m not, really,” Ben says, huffing weakly; he oddly pulls out his wallet, flipping open, and thumbs something out of it. “I think it was this.”

Eddie stares at the ripped piece of paper with Bev’s name on it, faded from nearly thirty years in Ben’s pocket. “Holy fuck, Hanscom.”

“Yeah, I know,” Ben says, visibly abashed, but still fond, as his thumb sweeps across the paper. “It’s not like her face is on the side of any buses.”

“Yeah,” Eddie mutters, nearly mentioning an ad he saw on the wall of an airport walkway in _Bangor_ of all places, but realizes that might be as pathetic as Ben’s yearbook clipping if Ben hadn’t seen it.

He takes a hard step back when Ben abruptly starts tugging off his flannel, then glances hastily toward the door when the Henley underneath is just as swiftly pulled over his head to expose a startlingly thin undershirt and sculpted biceps. “What the _fuck_ are you _doing_?”

“I just want to –” Ben pauses mid-tugging at his shirt, then starts to smile while turning around to point at a rose across the notch of his shoulder. “Look!”

Eddie stares at the little pink petals curving across muscle and bone. “Huh.”

“Do you have any?” Ben asks, pulling his Henley back on with a brief, thoughtful tap at his shoulder. He glances sideways, looking up and down Eddie with a curious sweep of his eyes. “I thought that’s why you were in here.”

“I – I don’t know… No?” Eddie glances toward the door, again, now straining to hear any interruption; he doesn’t really want to check – he knows that Richie is his already, he remembers that clearly, if melancholically, but he doesn’t know if Richie’s thought anything so nice about him that it bloomed into reality.

“Eddie,” Ben says, pulling his flannel back on with puppy-like encouragement in his face.

Eddie clenches his jaw, then looks down, starting to pull his shirt tails up with a grumble. “I’m not fucking taking anything off _.”_

He raises his shirt enough to get a good look across his back in the mirror, grumbling through Ben’s questions about his dumbbell routines, then his front, and feels a little stupid, if relieved, when he finds what he’s looking for after folding a sleeve to his elbow. He gapes at the flower spike for a few seconds, shocked at the brightness of the blue, and reaches down to confirm that the lines are even a little raised against his skin; it’s intense, in every sense of the word.

“Oh, that’s… _solid_ ,” Ben says, reaching out, then pulling his hand back when propriety visibly catches up to him. “And all the way around. I wonder what it is.”

Eddie swallows hard, studying it for a beat longer, then rolls his sleeve back down. “I dunno. But we should go back out there before the idiots get the wrong impression.”

“Yeah,” Ben says, laughing a little, a reluctant, blindsided sort of smile breaking out across his face. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell her.”

“Be happy you’re not married,” Eddie says, mouth twisting into a snarl mostly for the floor.

“Shit, Eddie,” Ben murmurs, pausing halfway through the door and hiding his startled pity fairly well by holding it open. “That sucks.”

It does, a fucking lot, and Eddie can’t quite stop thinking about it. It sticks to the forefront of his mind even when Stan shows up and starts yelling in that way of his how they’ve all been set up for clown shit. He flees a bowl of tiny, horrible little monsters, a foul, familiar black goo spreading fast for his fingertips, and hears his own name spoken in panic, making desperate eye contact with Richie on the other side of the room, and he doesn’t for an instant stop thinking about it. 

He definitely should, in fact, be much more concerned with his likely impending death, but instead he goes into his Townhouse room and downloads a new app; the sort that he never thought would apply to him, but now he gets the first that he sees in the category for _numen flowers_ with the ability to image search. He finds the flower spike on his arm easily enough, between the color and the scanner – a blue delphinium, or larkspur.

His soulmate gave him a larkspur. _Him._

 _Richie_ gave it to him _._

He rolls his lips together tight, biting down painfully, then hastily switches from the flower app to his texts. He taps Myra’s name and types out a message, then another, half-possessed by the feeling thrumming outward to his fingertips.

<<I met my soulmate. 10:32 PM

<<I’ll be filing for divorce when I get back. 10:32 PM

The phone starts to ring, Myra’s contact popping up with an uneven buzz in his palm.

<<I’ll be blocking your number until that time. 10:33 PM

10:33 PM _Don’t do this >>_

_10:33 PM Eddie please >>_

Eddie somehow manages to get her number blocked before he can receive any more messages. He exhales hard, staring at the screen until it goes dark, and slowly starts to grasp how much it actually seems as if a vice has released from around his chest, as if…

Wait, wait…

What the _fuck_?

He scrambles for the inhaler in his jacket pocket, staring at it and until he sees his hand start to shake, then shudders through his entire body while he throws it at the wall. “Fuck!”

“Eddie?” Bill shouts, his voice ringing with concern up the stairwell.

“I don’t have asthma!” Eddie snarls back, curling into himself on the top of the duvet with his head in his hands. How the fuck could he have forgotten _that_? It’s not like the fucking soulmate thing, he literally… His lungs didn’t fucking disappear! How long was his mom manipulating – was _Myra_ doing it, too? Shit, he might have to… No, one thing at a goddamn time.

“No shit!” Richie says brashly, from much closer, likely in his own room just down the hall.

“Morda w kubeł,” Eddie says, reluctantly sitting up when he hears footsteps approach his door. He rubs at his forehead, waiting for the knock, then rolls his eyes when ‘shave and a haircut’ echoes through the dry, aging wood.

“Did you just _Polish_ me?” Richie says, already grinning when Eddie’s thrown open the door. “Hey, could you – ?”

“No,” Eddie snaps, instantly recognizing the _teach me swear words_ tone in a way that’s outright nostalgic. “What the fuck do you want?”

“ _Eds_ , come on,” Richie says, then lowers both palms between them, at the same time exhaling a thoroughly condescending huff in the space between them. “Calm down.”

Eddie narrows his eyes under a furrowing brow. “Did you just _say_ that to me?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says, shoving in, then snorting while peering down at Eddie’s stack of luggage. “Anyway, I figured I got to show you this ‘cause I showed you the first time, right?”

Eddie blinks rapidly, then feels his heart kick up too when Richie summarily starts to take off _his_ shirt _;_ why the shit are attractive men just fucking undressing around him? “The _fuck_ are you – ?” He gawks at what he’s pretty sure are peonies blooming bright across the backs of Richie’s shoulders, then forces himself to look over at Richie’s open, inquisitive face before the blooms can grow any bigger; thank fuck that Richie can’t really see them, because one just turned bright red. “Wow, those are… pretty big.”

“Yeah!” Richie says, turning on a heel to face Eddie properly while thumbing a gesture at his back, holding his shirt in one hand rather than putting it back on; _why_ is he not putting his shirt back on? “It’s pretty amazing, right – you think my soulmate saw me at the restaurant?”

Eddie wets his lips, nodding a few times before offering a small shrug. “Uh yeah, maybe.”

Richie’s magnified stare gets unsettlingly intense, then he clears his throat while diverting bizarrely toward the en suite. “Hopefully, it’s no one awful – like fuck, do you think it’s uh… _uh_? Greta Keene?”

Eddie follows into the bathroom, trying not to stare too openly at all of Richie’s exposed chest hair. He doesn’t like the implication _Greta_ goddamn _Keene_ being the first person to jump to Richie’s mind when it comes to his potential for a soulmate. “Did you have a crush on _Greta_?”

Richie widens his eyes comically, looking at Eddie through the mirror while exhaling a bark of a laugh. “No! No, shit, man. She was super shitty to all of us.”

“She was, yeah,” Eddie says, flatly, biting down on a sneer.

“Maybe it was the waitress,” Richie says, gesturing at himself in the mirror with a folded arm and a hand like he’s handing out a menu. “She looked too young, though. Oh hey, it could be Bev?”

Eddie rolls his eyes, only barely keeping himself from pulling up his sleeve and waving the new larkspur across his wrist until Richie just gets it. “Did you ever even like Bev like that?”

“Nah, man,” Richie says, smile shrinking by a measure, “I’m just not lucky enough for it to be anyone I _actually_ like.”

“You’re such a dipshit,” Eddie says, immediately losing that urge to show off his flowers. He had somehow forgotten that part; he knows by the intensity of the flower that Richie feels _something_ , but he’s never exactly given any hint to seeing Eddie that way. Or any man. It didn't even occur to Eddie how it could be platonic. “It’s supposed to be someone you… like.”

Richie hums sharply with a cock of his head, turning around in front of the mirror to angle for an apparent look at his back, awkwardly reaching up and tracing across the tops of the peonies. He laughs a beat later, oddly breathy and grin getting even wider, eyes lifting to stare widely at Eddie again through his reflection. “Hey, you know, maybe you’re right.”

Eddie gestures with one hand and a raised finger at the mirror. “No shit, I’m – ” He pauses, then feels his expression go completely limp when he catches sight of glint of the ring still on another of his fingers. “ _Shit_.”

“You good?” Richie says, untwisting to look at him properly, then finally, _finally_ , pulling his t-shirt back over his head.

“Yeah, yep,” Eddie says, exhaling with a short cough into said hand, then dropping it behind his back while working the ring off with his thumb. “Keep forgetting the whole… clown bullshit, you know. Why we’re really back here?”

“Oh, yeah,” Richie says, scratching at the back of his head with that grin still tugging at his face. He points to the aspirator on the ground, red and white glaring against the dingy carpet. “You forgot you didn’t have _asthma_?”

“I forgot a lot,” Eddie admits, bitterly, tightening his jaw while he walks past Richie to pick up the aspirator.

“Well,” Richie says, while taking a deep breath, eyes dropping to the aspirator for a beat before flicking back up to Eddie’s face. “At least you’re cute, Spaghetti.”

“Shut up,” Eddie snaps, feeling heat climbing up the sides of his neck. He tightens his hand on the aspirator, feeling the plastic warp into the metal, then throws it this time into the small, unobtrusive bin just next to the writing desk. “That shit didn’t fly when I was twelve and now I’m fucking middle-aged.”

“Nuh-uh,” Richie says, reaching out to aggressively attempt pinching at his cheek. “I’m not hearing it.”

“Stop it!” Eddie says, dodging back while slapping the hand away.

Richie laughs again, but it’s soft, glancing across Eddie’s face with something unreadable, yet undeniably _familiar_ in his eyes. “No.”

Eddie finds himself simply looking back, an anxiousness thick at the base of his throat.

“Guys!” Bev yells, her voice cutting between them from two floors down the Townhouse. “Come on. We’re waiting for _you_!”

* * *

The following twenty-four hours manage to pack in the lifetime of shit Eddie’s worked to avoid for almost twenty-four _years_. He climbs down into a dank hole, he gets thrown up on, he gets stabbed, he _stabs_ , he nearly lets Richie fucking die, he climbs in _another, danker_ hole…

It almost makes him forget the flowers – almost, except when Richie quietly takes his hands and forgives him for his fear; almost, except when he holds tight onto his own forearm while Richie yanks open labeled doors.

The fact has clawed back to the forefront of his head now, though, as he gawks up to where Richie is floating – his Richie, his _soulmate_ – in real danger to die _again,_ and that… that is when he finally throws his fear and prudence out with a fence post into an eldritch alien _bug_.

He heart beats in his throat when Richie falls, listening to him land with a terrible thump, and he rushes over with a slide across jagged rock to his knees, leaning in close to desperately listen for breath while trying to feel out Richie’s pulse with a shaky hand. And that’s when Richie’s eyes gain back their color, and he takes a deep, coughing breath, just in time for Eddie to _hear_ more than feel a terrible crack somewhere near his shoulder and get thrown into a solid wall of rock.

It may have been a stupid, rash decision, but not one he could ever regret, though he probably won’t get the chance. He can’t quite turn enough to look at the damage, but he can feel it, in that it hurts so much he doesn’t really have a description way. It’s almost more like a… a temperature, but all over the place – the pain is searing, but the blood loss is just cold, neither particularly conducive to thinking very clear. He manages to remember enough of the basement – the leper, the _choking_ – to tell everyone about it when they rush to crowd around him in horror, and… and then it’s just him and Richie, propped up against slimy, uneven stone.

“Eds, Eddie,” Richie says, his eyes frantic, as they’ve been since they thankfully lost that horrific cloudiness. He’s shattered one of his lenses… “Look at me – you’re gonna be fine, okay? You’ll be okay.”

“Rich,” Eddie gasps, trying to reach up, but his broken arm feels tingly and almost numb, fingertips wet, and he can’t even lift it, while his other arm barely glances across the crook of Richie’s elbow. He feels briefly, irrationally frustrated; he only just found him again, and he – he’s never going to get him.

“That was so fucking brave,” Richie sobs, tears already dripping down his face, clearing streaks across his sewer-stained cheeks. “The fuck you gotta be so cool, huh?”

Eddie manages to smile, and catches on the faint white lilies winding up Richie’s hands to his wrists, ultimately into his shirt. “I… I did that – your… flowers.”

Richie chokes on his next words, leaning down and pressing his forehead hard into Eddie’s uninjured cheek. “Yeah, Eds, you did.”

Eddie takes a breath and tries to move again, shuddering at a wave of consequent, spiking pain, even his jaw locking up for an instant, but he manages to reach up a second time with his unbroken arm, grasping best he can at Richie’s shirt. He swallows reflexively against a thick well of a sob, feeling selfish and guilty when he hears the shouts of the others further up the cave. “Rich _,_ y-you should –”

Richie wordlessly shushes into his cheek, shaking his head. “Don’t you… _don’t_.”

Eddie closes his eyes against another shudder of pain, but manages to keep hold of Richie’s side, pressing weakly into his ribs. He… he just wants this for as long as he can have it.

* * *

Eddie doesn’t remember getting out of the cavern or even to the hospital. He simply wakes up to that slightly nightmarish smell of sanitizer, the foggy, queasy effect of painkillers, and half-stuck fast in a hellish plaster-metal contraption that doesn’t let him move an inch. He knows exactly why he’s in it, even appreciates the way the doctor describes to him in excruciating detail exactly how his arm and shoulder where put back together like a jigsaw, but he _hates it._

He hates the way it makes other parts of his body ache, how it weirdly rubs into his back _and_ front, but mostly for the way the Losers each make identical grimaces as they file into his room. It’s like being a kid again, wearing around a reminder of a horrible experience, only now he can’t even use it to thump anything and he can’t leave his goddamn bed, let alone the room.

His mother would’ve fucking _loved_ it.

The Losers lean in and then away, making appropriate little noises and faces of pity. He raises a brow at a new bloom on Ben: a bright orange something spiky on the back of his arm – embers, Christ. He’s more surprised by a spread of lilac on Mike’s elbow, big and pink, but loses that train of thought when he realizes Richie’s the only one in long sleeves.

Oh.

“– and I’m so glad you’re okay,” Bev says, reaching out and squeezing at Eddie’s ankle through the bedspread. She holds him for a solid beat, then nods while pulling away with a smile. “But we came to an agreement that you guys should talk as soon as possible.”

“Wait, what?” Richie says, glancing after their murmuring and exiting friends in a particularly startled blink.

Bill grabs the edge of the door as the last person out, offering a particularly stern glance backward that hits Eddie at the sternum. “Talk, guys.”

“I – I was going to!” Richie exclaims, his voice cracking a little at the end.

Eddie looks over, away from the door, and is surprised to see Richie is staring straight at _him._ He swallows shallow, suddenly more queasy, and can’t quite manage to keep himself from glancing down to the peeks of the lilies on Richie’s fingers under overlong sleeves.

“Later, when there was less… hospital,” Richie continues, glancing a few seconds toward the monitors, then the window with a short cough. “I know you fucking hate these places? I didn’t want like thought association shit.”

“It’s okay, it’s…” Eddie shrugs small, taken aback by the evident thought that went out into Richie’s plan to avoid the subject. It sounds a little bit like a lot of bullshit, but he can’t quite begrudge him for it – he could have said something himself _before_ either of them nearly died. “It’s pretty obvious by now.”

“I’ve known since we got back, actually,” Richie admits, hastily tugging up the sleeves of his hoodie and looking down while flipping his arms to show off the rest of the lilies with a crooked grin.

Eddie looks swiftly up from the flowers to stare at Richie from under his brow. “You what - _How_?”

“When I went into your hotel room,” Richie says, leaning forward, gesturing flippantly with one hand before using it to trace across the line of his own shoulder. “And I took my _shirt_ off…”

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie grumbles, feeling heat burst up his neck and across his cheeks at the reminder; it feels like that happened months ago. “You think you’re so fucking smart.”

“I am smart!” Richie crows, eyes widening joyously while he gestures at his own head with a flick of fingers. “ _Valedictorian_.”

Eddie forces sneers in response. “You’ve been waiting twenty years to use that as a fucking comeback.”

“Kind of,” Richie allows, rolling his eyes up dramatically while he shrugs with an uneasy sort of hum. “I forgot it, too, so I’ve missed out on a lifetime of using it on _anyone_.”

“Good,” Eddie mutters, reaching up and scratching at the edge of his scalp; his face is still warm, but Richie’s not fucking moving, and he’s going to blame the drugs for the way he can’t think of a single thing to say.

Richie clears his throat, shrugging tightly while again glancing down at his arms. “So… yup. You went bright red and so did the flower.”

“Whatever,” Eddie says, shifting his jaw and refusing to admit any sort of esteem for Richie’s basic problem solving skills, or that he’s maybe stupid happy that he was the first person Richie thought of, not _Greta_ fucking _Keene_. “You didn’t notice before.”

“You knew back then?” Richie asks, eyes lighting up with some mix of excitement and what might be an awful edge of hurt. “When I showed you on my birthday?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Eddie admits, thoughtlessly trying to gesture, but his arm naturally twinges in pain while his head feels a little bit like a torn sandbag. He glances anxiously over Richie’s shoulder, only that just makes him think about the peonies. “I just – I guessed, but I didn’t know anything. I couldn’t.”

“You _know_ now, though,” Richie asks, his voice a little lower, eyes dropping, and it becomes obvious what he’s actually asking to confirm.

Eddie rolls his lips together, then tips his head to the side with a scowl. “Just fucking look.”

Richie proceeds to literally just _look_ for a tense few seconds, then awkwardly glances back to Eddie’s face. “I dunno if you’ve ever noticed, Eds, but my eyesight is actually the opposite of x-ray.”

Eddie closes his eyes for a beat, then lifts his other, merely gowned shoulder and arm in gesture. “Come undress me, asshole.”

“Oh my, Mister Kasbrak,” Richie says, raising his tone into a lurid, trans-Atlantic Voice, “So forward.”

“Don’t make me press the button,” Eddie says, pointedly, if awkwardly, yanking up the remote from next to the bed.

“No, not the _button_ ,” Richie gasps, laughing in a huff while shaky hands carefully betray his deeper hesitation.

Eddie turns his chin as the gown tugs away, showing off a patch of the bright mix of blooms across his shoulders and collarbones that the attending nurse from earlier had commented on as beautiful while checking his shoulder. He can’t quite see them at this angle without a mirror, unable to really move enough, but the nurse had taken a picture.

Richie is silent for a tense moment, then hums sharp into a choked laugh. “Are these – ?”

“Yeah, fuck you,” Eddie says, looking back down from the opposite wall to the red and yellow hibiscus that he can catch at the edges of their petals. “You tattooed me in a goddamn Hawaiian shirt.”

Richie keeps laughing, little huffs of breath, with his touch light and nervous over the edges of the blooms. “I’m not even a little sorry.”

“This one had a – a _larkspur_ ,” Eddie says, weakly wriggling the fingers on his trapped hand. “I looked it up. It’s super blue.”

“Huh. _Oh,_ hey,” Richie says, then quickly tugs up his shirt, revealing a towering set of red blooms along a single stem going straight from his hip to his armpit. “I got this one in the cave, too – just couldn’t see it. It’s like… tall?”

“Get my phone?” Eddie asks, jerking his head toward it on the stack of his things on the tiny window sill. “I got an app for, uh… flower types.”

“Aw, silly rabbit,” Richie says, apparently settling in to be absolutely insufferable, probably for the rest of their lives. “That’s cute as shit. What’s your passcode?”

“0703.” Eddie rolls his eyes with a slightly woozy cough; it’s better than being a pasta, sort of, though definitely more patronizing. At least Richie clearly doesn’t realize the birthday thing, which Eddie himself hadn’t until this fucking moment.

Shit, he’s had it that since his first one in like _2008_.

“Gladiolus,” Richie reads, then his brows go up, though his eyes continue to rove across the screen of the phone. “Faithfulness, integrity, and _infatuation_.”

“Christ, don’t read the meanings,” Eddie mutters, trying not to think about the funeral flowers still blatant across Richie’s arms like fucking opera gloves. “They’re bullshit.”

“Red gladiolus means romance, passion, love and even – ” Richie drops his voice, leaning in with a serious expression. “Aggression.”

Eddie tries to grab for the phone, but he’s definitely still solidly affixed to the bed by his own arm. “Trashmouth, you – ”

“Let’s see what Hawaiian flowers are,” Richie says, taking a few needless steps back with a laugh and a wide grin, though it slowly begins to shrink, brows pinching together while his thumb swipes up and down, tapping quickly, then, “Okay, that doesn’t actually – Oh, _hibiscus_!”

Eddie goes limp against the pillows and stares at the ceiling. He wonders where the others went – he thinks that at least one of them would help him get his phone back. Ben, probably, or Stan, if just to silence Richie’s eager crowing

“Red is love,” Richie hums, pitching high and low with some imitation of a thoughtful mutter. “Yellow is friendship – _psh_.”

“Is it?” Eddie asks the light fixture, before he can stop himself. “This?”

Richie actually goes quiet a moment. “Uh. _What_?”

“Platonic?” Eddie snaps, refusing to glance down to Richie's face, to try and read it, since he can't even leave if the expression is something he doesn't want to see. “Is it fucking _friendship_ – is that the only way you like me?”

Richie doesn’t respond for a long time, breaths and the monitors the only noise between them. “Is it for you?” He asks, voice now gone small.

“I already asked for a divorce,” Eddie admits tightly, tracing along the cracks of the drop ceiling to a black edge of a tile that had better not be fucking mold above his head. “You’re one of my best friends, Rich. But. Not just.”

“Cool, cool... Yeah, same, like you know, like. Uh, right after you broke your arm the first time?” Richie as, voice pitching suddenly over loud and barking out a tense laugh, foot scuffing on the ground and kicking at something with a clatter. “I might've carved our initials into the Kissing Bridge. Maybe?" 

Eddie exhales a harsh breath and drops his chin back to his chest to stare. He watches Richie rebalance against the window, slowly narrowing his eyes while feeling a smile stretch across his mouth. “You _what_?”

“Yee-up,” Richie mutters, looking back to the phone with a pointed, frankly silly raise of the screen over his face. “1989 was a wild year for clowns and – and fucking bitch-ass feelings.”

Eddie tries to reach out again, even kicks a little at the end of the bed, trying to make Richie to look at him again. He grumbles a curse, then, “So do you want to make out or what?”

Richie goes markedly still for a few beats, then looks up from the phone with a satisfyingly blindsided blink. “I wasn’t aware that was on the table,” he says, eyes demonstrably sweeping across Eddie on the bed, then to the lit monitors. “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to, but. Dude.”

“ _Richie_ ,” Eddie says, hoping he sounds angry, not just whiny, though that’s exactly how he _feels_ about it.

“You’re on like a lot of drugs, short stack,” Richie says, brows going even higher over his frames; he’s clearly some kind of confused at the offer, which is just like his dumb ass.

“I am 5’9,” Eddie snaps, now positive that he sounds whiny; why won’t Richie just get over here?

“Which is like way – ” Richie lowers a flat hand in front of his shoulder while grinning at his own joke. “Than me. Either way, you’re up to your eyeballs in painkillers.”

Eddie wants to demand when Richie got so fucking _chivalrous_ , but it’s no big secret Richie’s crudeness is mostly mouth. He sighs as deeply as he can, which is not very and mildly wheezing, “One?”

“…Chaste.” Richie _finally_ allows, stepping forward while setting Eddie’s phone next to his good hand on the bed. “Like Aurora.”

Eddie bites into his lip with a frown. “Who the fuck is Aurora?”

“Sleeping Beauty, you green-eyed monster,” Richie says, leaning down over Eddie with a grin. He’s so close, and whatever he washed his hair with smells like it was maybe made specifically for Eddie. “Pretty sure your mom’s name was Son –”

Eddie grabs the back of Richie’s neck to pull him all the way down, inhaling sharply through his nose when their lips make contact. It’s not quite what he’s imagined, could do without the… _everything_ of the last few days, but Richie’s grinning and close, opening his mouth under the attention for Eddie to –

“Sirs!” A nurse barks, poking a head in through the door with a flat frown. “Please conduct yourselves responsibly.”

Eddie scowls hard, flipping off their turned back over Richie’s shoulder. He glances sideways toward the monitors, grudgingly curious, and sees that his heart rate is definitely a little elevated, but _whatever -_ he’s actually looking forward to something for the first time in like literal fucking decades.

“Aggressive,” Richie hums, arching a little to pointedly tap at his side over the gladiolus.

“Did they say when my arm is supposed to be better?” Eddie asks, irked that he can’t get a better hold on Richie’s shoulders, pull him in closer, because of this stupid torture bed. “Other than never.”

“Three or four _months_ , Eds,” Richie says, his thumb rubbing soft against the arch of Eddie’s cheek. “You’re going to need a card for the airport, all the metal you got now.”

“Whatever,” Eddie says, staring back into Richie’s soft look, feeling like his face has probably gone brighter than the gladiolus under the attention. “They beep me every fucking time, anyway.”

Richie snorts through his nose, leaning in to press a kiss at Eddie’s cheek next to his thumb. “That, Eddie-baby, is karma.”

**Author's Note:**

> [ I took this particular theme from this Brad/Ray fic, so if you're any amount interested, please give it a read!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24097123)
> 
> I can also be found on twitter [ @ ezlebe](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en)


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